Sunday, August 02, 2009

June and July paintings

Not working at the same pace as in May (two weeks in Spain and the new pup tend to put a damper on things like this--though I did take a sketchbook on the vacation and did about 20 ink drawings), but messing around a bit more, beginning to feel more comfortable with the medium again. Much like those musicians and labels accused of putting out too many things, I'll post all of 'em, ones I like and ones I don't. Admittedly, the real disasters end up in the trash, but there have been surprisingly few of those, at least in my eyes.

These are close to actual size (when clicked on) and in more or less chronological order. [Edit--some seem to reproduce larger; the t-shirts are 4 x 4 ", for instance; not sure why they appear that way)

Four red t-shirt studies.

Small rock thing--didn't much like it but did take a shine to the blue on burnt sienna at the bottom, so did a quick relatively rare (for me) abstraction.

I agree on the third t-shirt. I left it "unfinished" knowing I'd probably overwork it as indeed happened in the fourth (same set-up). One of the interesting aspects of watercolors: very easy to overwork but then, on the other hand, sometimes things happen during that overworking process, good things, that wouldn't otherwise. One I did over the weekend of that same rock in the last painting is a case in point (next series)

I often enjoy playing around with shadows of objects that are otherwise rendered fairly realistically. I sometimes isolate what I see as a secondary or tertiary color element in the shadow and (over)emphasize it. That was the case with the pale green; I liked it against the dark gray rock.

Haven't heard the Tilbury/Polwechsel yet (nor the Butcher) but now that you've reminded me, I'll give a look for it this afternoon.

re: more abstracts-well, maybe on occasion. Not to give the wrong impression, but in a way they're too "easy" for me. They're fun and, to some extent, I enjoy doing them but--maybe it's me and I'm just too easily satisfied, but they tend not present enough of a challenge.

Back when I first had access to and began messing around with programs like Photoshop, I was a little dismayed at how simple it was to produce (fourth rate) Rothkos. Did a bunch of them that were perfectly handsome works, lovely to look at, would've made fine CD covers. Now, it takes a little something, a decent visual sense, a willingness to mess around with filters, etc. but I could do them all day; the results might be nice but they weren't so satisfying.

This one was simply the result of some happenstance marks made on the previous painting that I liked and wanted to see in a more "raw" state. Painting took all of five minutes. It's fine, I like it. But to sit and do one after another...probably not.

About Me

In his spare time, Olewnick writes about music (and other stuff) here and for Squid's Ear. He's engaged in an increasingly lengthy project writing the biography of Keith Rowe, improvising musician and founding member of AMM. Among other things, Olewnick paints and is a pretty damn fair crossword solver.
"You think it's one way. But it's the other way." - Marlo Stansfield